‘In recent years’, Liu wrote in his diary, ‘scholars have all been divided into two groups, called “those who hold to the old” and “those who hold to the new”. Those who hold to the old cleave to the way of Confucius and Mencius, while those who hold to the new seek only after Western methods.’ In the 1930s, China saw the inexorable political rise of those who cleaved to the new.
